Love
My True Love Hath My Heart
My true love hath my heart, and I have his,
By just exchange, one for the other given.
I hold his dear, and mine he cannot miss,
There never was a better bargain driven.
His heart in him his thoughts and senses guides;
He loves my heart, for once it was his own,
I cherish his, because in me it bides.
His heart his wound received from my sight,
My heart was wounded with his wounded heart;
For as from me on him his hurt did light,
So still methought in me his hurt did smart.
Both equal hurt, in this change sought our bliss:
My true love hath my heart and I have his.
~ Sir Philip Sidney (1554-86)
More Love Quotes and Poems
Love and The Law
Two proverbs in Chapter 28 declare that obedience to God’s law teaches us how to resist wrongdoers and how to decide which people make fitting companions and which do not. As in many other parts of the Bible, the law of God spoken of here is not a collection of regulations, but the written revelation of what God is like and what he wants us to be like. To keep this law means to love God and, next to that, to love others.
An emphasis on love does not mean that moral standards no longer apply or that wrongdoing can be ignored. Love and law are not opposed. God’s purpose in making known his law is not to reduce people to a state where love has no place and they can no longer be themselves, but to show them the sort of life that he, their Maker, wants for them.
God wants people to enjoy life because of a relationship they enjoy with him. In human relationships the more loving and understanding two people are, the more each does what pleases the other. Although they may keep certain unwritten ‘rules’, they do not see them as rules. The relationship is based on love, which is how God wants it to be with us. Love is not an alternative to the law, but the fulfilment of it.
Once we have this right relation with God, we shall not see his teachings as burdensome. If we love Jesus, we shall want to keep his commandments. The New Testament is no different from the Old in giving specific instruction about right and wrong behaviour, and Jesus dis not teach that we can do as we like provided we are acting in love. Certainly, he condemned those whose law-keeping made them proud of themselves and critical of others, but he did not oppose the law itself. In fact, his teachings about love-based behaviour came direct from the Old Testament.
Can We Trust Each Other?
Many people do not like to be given instruction, especially the black-and-white instruction that we meet in Proverbs. This is a reflection on our fallen human nature; we do not like laws. We want to be free from restraints, free to do our own thing. But in that case we shall soon discover that where there is no law there is no trust. And without trust, society falls apart.
We see this, for example, when some catastrophe occurs and there is a breakdown in law and order. Looting becomes common, even among those who normally do not break in and steal. Once any course of action becomes more convenient — cheating the tax office, shoplifting, prostitution, abortion, divorce — people will be tempted to take advantage of it.
If we can barely trust ourselves to maintain personal standards once society’s restraints are relaxed, how much less can we trust others — people we do not know at all. That is why a society needs civil laws. Where people do not know each other personally, they must have some recognized standards by which society can function.
Within the family, however, written laws should not be necessary. The trust between husband and wife should produce a confidence in their relationship, so that it might be said of the wife, ‘her husband trusts in her’, and of the husband ’she does him good all the days of her life’. This trust not only gives security to their relationship, but also helps in bringing up their children. The ‘father’s teaching’ and the ‘mother’s instruction’ are equally beneficial because the two people trust and support each other.
Parents hope that as the children grow to maturity, their lifestyle will exhibit a degree of quality and so reflect well upon the family name. At the same time they are aware, as many Proverbs affirm, that family failures occur and heartache results. We do not always achieve the ideal, but that is no reason to throw the ideal away.
Marriage is that relation between man and woman in which the independence is equal, the dependence mutual, and the obligation reciprocal. ~ Louis K. Anspacher
Meaning of True Love
Friend And Acquaintance
Facts about Love
Stages of Love
Meaning of Love
Falling In Love
Infatuation Vs Love
Concept of Love
Intimate Relationships
Interpersonal Relationships: Friendship
Interpersonal Relationships: Affiliation
Social Interaction
Love and Friendship
Relationships
Marriage
Love and Marriage
Woman
What women want
What Is Love + A Child’s View of Love
How Do you show your man you really love him?
Excuses For Working Mum
Rules for Happy Marriage
Facing The Future
Methinks his birthday of our married life is like a cape, which we now have doubled, and find a more infinite ocean of love stretching out before us. God bless us and keep us; for there is something more awful in happiness than in sorrow — the latter being earthly and finite, the former composed of the texture and substance of eternity, so that spirits still embodied may well tremble at it. ~ Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-64)
To his wife Mary (11 August 1810)
Every day every hour every moment makes me feel more deeply how blessed we are in each other, how purely how faithfully how ardently, and how tenderly we love each other; I put this last word last because, though I am persuaded that a deep affection is not uncommon in married life, yet I am confident that a lively, gushing, thought-employing, spirit-stirring, passion of love is very rare even among good people…
O Mary I love you with a passion which grows till I tremble to think of its strength.
~ William Wordsworth (1770-1850)
Quotes About Love
Love many things, for therein lies the true strength, and whoever loves much, performs much, and can accomplish much, and that which is done in love is well done. ~ Vincent van Gogh
Some people think only intellect counts: knowing how to solve problems, knowing how to get by, knowing how to identify an advantage and seize it. But the functions of intellect are insufficient without courage, love, friendship, compassion and empathy. ~ Dean Koontz
This is what you shall do: Love the earth and sun and animals, despise riches, give alms to everyone that asks, stand up for the stupid and crazy, devote your income and labour to others, hate tyrants, argue not concerning God, have patience and indulgence toward the people, take off your hat to nothing known or unknown or to any man or number of men, go freely with powerful uneducated persons and with the young and with the mothers of families, re-examine all you have been told at school or church or in any book, dismiss whatever insults your own soul, and your very flesh shall be a great poem and have the richest fluency not only in its words but in the silent lines of its lips and face and between lashes of your eyes and in every motion and joint of your body.
